Towards a taxonomy of mHealth

Abstract

This study is concerned with mHealth as a subset of eHealth; referring to the delivery of health-related services via mobile communications technology. Suitable taxonomies can facilitate classification of complex domains and supports researchers and practitioners in their efforts to understand and analyse domain relevant innovation. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a Taxonomy of mHealth, towards an eventual useful taxonomy of mHealth. This is operationalized through an interpretivist inductive engagement with relevant literature. A Literature Scoping grounds the endeavour and considers the characteristics of mHealth. The scoping review focusses, primarily on reported implementations of mHealth and secondarily, the meta-anylysis found in reports, including significant grey literature. A resulting suggested taxonomy is applied to two instances of mHealth implementations in South Africa to gauge the artifacts efficacy; concluding remarks regarding a suggested way forward are provided.